I understand that in Carboniferous era insects were big because of oxygen but what about other creatures?
Why were some dinos as big as whales? Why were a lot of them many times bigger than elephants? How does it work? If mammals reigned in those eras instead of dinos and insects, would they also be this gigantic compared to modern ones? (Like gigantic sloth but 5 times the size of it?)
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We don’t know exactly why dinosaurs got so big, but it seems it’s because the environment supported gigantic animals.
Oxygen levels were a lot higher, and temperature was a lot warmer during this era. Without such high oxygen levels larger animals aren’t possible in our current era.
Having larger bodies may have helped them regulate their body temperatures better, was good defense against predators, and allowed them to access more food sources. By extension the predators got bigger because they needed to be bigger to chase down such large prey.
Blue Whales though are the largest creatures to have ever lived. Their massive weight is supported by the ocean which helps, but new theories seem to show that whales got so large because of the ice age. During periods of ocean glaciation only the largest whale species survived, possibly because of their fat content and their ability to go long distances without air and food.
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